So, since our little Tick escapade last Friday (and finding ANOTHER not-yet-attached tick on her on Monday), BBJ has been under house arrest. We need to get someone in here to spray for ticks...or else BBJ is going to spend the rest of her summer in grocery stores and our living room!
Yesterday she was cranky and bored. She was on Tylenol (that's a whole 'nother story!) and really just wanted to go outside. As a treat, I pulled something I had been saving as an "outside toy." I had a little bucket of soy beans that were no longer clean enough to eat (they used to keep my pens vertical in a mug), but were perfect for little fingers to sift and throw! I gave her three little cups of beans, a little plastic block to hide in the beans and a broken spoon and let her go at it. She LOVED it. She picked up a little handful of beans and dropped them on her tray. They gave a very satisfying *thwock. She looked at me, sure I was going to reprimand her. When I laughed, she gave a whoop and went at it! She dumped them from one cup to the other, sifted them through her fingers and had a general ball for about 20 minutes. (BBJ's attention span is usually about 10, so I consider this a resounding success!
If your kids are a bit older, I offer this bit of advice - have a food fight! When I was younger, my siblings were home schooled. Right around June 15, my two brothers got VERY jealous of my "Field Day" activities, so I decided to host one, just for them. My sister and I filled up water balloons, boiled a pot of spaghetti, and hid strawberries in pie plates of whipped cream. We started with a good ol' spaghetti food fight, on the lawn. When we had beaten each other soundly, we moved on to Find the Strawberry With Your Mouth Before Anybody Else Does, always a classic. (My sister won that one.) Finally, we threw the water balloons around, to clean off the whipped cream! We picked up the remnants of the water balloons and the bulk of the spaghetti, and let the lawn mower take care of the rest. You could use any games you like, but I think older siblings would have a great time orchestrating this for the younger ones!
For more great tips on what to do in the summer with kids, head on over to Rocks in My Dryer.
Way to be resourceful! That's the great thing about being a kid, simple is fun. Good luck with those ticks...sounds like that will be a nightmare saga. I think "OFF" might work on ticks. Worth a try.
ReplyDelete